


The Absence of Sound

by wily_one24



Category: Rizzoli & Isles
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Tumblr Prompt, angsty ladies being angsty, could be rizzles if you squint, two idiots in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 17:53:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7855114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wily_one24/pseuds/wily_one24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maura knows what sound is; she spent several years and countless hours of personal study in medical school and is quite satisfied with her ability to bring forth the relevant passages in a manner of seconds. <i>The ear is an organ of balance and sound, it receives sound waves travelling through the air and changes them into mechanical vibrations and then into electrical impulses which are sent to the brain, it senses the body’s position in relation to gravity allowing the body to maintain equilibrium.</i></p><p>What Maura has no ability to verbalise, to understand or comprehend, is the absence of sound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr prompt. Technically not a relationship fic, but if you squint it can be Rizzles. 
> 
> Enjoy

***

Maura knows what sound is; she spent several years and countless hours of personal study in medical school and is quite satisfied with her ability to bring forth the relevant passages in a manner of seconds.

_The ear is an organ of balance and sound, it receives sound waves travelling through the air and changes them into mechanical vibrations and then into electrical impulses which are sent to the brain, it senses the body’s position in relation to gravity allowing the body to maintain equilibrium._

What Maura has no ability to verbalise, to understand or comprehend, is the absence of sound.

The absence of sound is a physical thing, as much as the presence of it.

It is the blank wall of Jane’s apartment, the large empty space behind the door that nobody mentions. The small plants and shelving units and faceless, bland objects with no personality that Jane shoves there to forget.

It is the moment after Jane whimpers in her sleep, finally slumbering after weeks of nightmares, sprawled out in Maura’s bed like a sleek ivy plant of warmth, face hollow and dark in ways she never allows it in public. It is the slender, spidery hand on the pillow next to Jane’s face and the fingers that Maura watches rise and fall in a rhythm that drives her insane for hours after.

It passes briefly, too briefly, and Maura has the strongest urge to video the progression so she can study it later, compare it to a set of black and white keys, transcribe the notes and finally, finally see the song that haunts Jane’s nightmares.

She doesn’t.

It is the award shoved to the back of the closet for exceptional bravery, behind the dusty frame of a pink gaudy certificate dated when Jane was eight with a stock image of a silhouetted girl at a piano. The absence of sound is Maura’s complete lack of response when Jane softly calls it ‘the only beautiful thing I could do’ and then shrugs and goes to the fridge as a sure sign of slamming the lid on that conversation.

The absence of sound is the itch in Maura’s throat, bubbling to the surface now and then, to look at Jane and say the words she keeps trapped. Her hands are physiologically sound, there is no medical reason, so Jane… Jane… Do you still play the piano? But Maura bites her lips and ducks her head and changes the subject in her brain because she refuses to ask the one question that _he_ still taunts Jane with at every meeting.

It is the cold days, the stressful days, the twenty two hour days that make Jane dig her thumbs into her palm and palpate the aching musculature there and the way she shoves them behind her back whenever anyone else notices.

It’s the tremble of Jane’s chin in the middle of the night whenever he surfaces again.

When there is no gravity and there and there are no vibrations save the pounding of her own heart in the middle of the night lying next to Jane, Maura cannot hear. Her auditory canals have nothing to do. Limp and useless, her malleus goes to sleep, snuggling up to the incus and snapes, ignoring the perilymph crying for action.

Silence is deafening. 

***


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane knows a lot of things: she knows criminals; baseball stats; the law; the feel of metal sliding through tendon and bones and muscles; the smell of her grandmother’s gnocchi recipe; and the feel of Maura’s interest.

***

Intelligence is subjective. 

Jane knows a lot of things: she knows criminals; baseball stats; the law; the feel of metal sliding through tendon and bones and muscles; the smell of her grandmother’s gnocchi recipe; and the feel of Maura’s interest. 

Maura is the smartest person Jane knows, she pulls esoteric facts out her brain without blinking, she has a near photographic memory, can speak a truly frightening amount of languages, and love. Maura knows love like nobody else Jane has ever met, she just doesn’t trust herself with it. 

But there are things Maura doesn’t know and, if Jane has anything to do with it, she never will. 

So when she catches those eyes watching her hands, calculating their movement, studying the patterns that rise and fall in her fingers, Jane curls them into a fist and draws them close, out of sight. 

She wakes one morning to the feel of Maura’s fingers on hers, the lightest touch of fingernails against her knuckles, and immediately she stills. She hadn’t been aware of their movement, but she knows. She knows without thinking the tune. 

Jane does not hear Rachmaninoff in her dreams; she feels it. Feels it like the soft build of walking down wooden steps; the loud crashing of pain in her skull; the frantic crescendo of pain that ricochets from her palms to every nerve in her body; like hyperventilating at the heavy weight of an unwanted man and his hot breath on her neck; then the slowly fading dim of her hope at that last moment past pain when she had almost given up. 

Prelude Op 3 No 2 is not beautiful and cannot be spoken out loud. 

“Jane…”

Maura’s voice, soft and hesitant and pleading, and Jane shakes her head unable to respond. 

“… do you ever…?”

She rolls away. 

“… miss it?”

She thinks of the rocking of her body on a stool, the power of sound, the release of feet hitting pedals at the right time, of spidering her fingers over black and white keys, of closing her eyes and losing herself in the moment. 

Jane thinks of months of physiotherapy and sleepless nights, of being too scared to sleep alone, of hearing that voice, of the aching pain that never seems to leave her hands, of terror that steals her breath. 

She thinks of Maura knowing these things. 

“No.” 

***


End file.
